My name is SGT McCann, Christopher (but you can call me Chris). And what I have here is a photo I took of my soldiers…
in action in Afghanistan.
The email was sent unsolicited to a few Tribune editors whose names McCann had found on the newspaper’s website. The photo attached was dark and strangely beautiful — helmeted figures in a desert night punctuated by green, blue and red lights from headlamps or flashlights fitted with colored filters to reduce visibility. And in the center, what looked like an explosion of orange fire.
It was an instant of combat — the exact moment a M777 howitzer was fired in battle, at 11 p.m. on July 20 in the Zhari District, Kandahar.
McCann had photographed it. And in tribute to his men, McCann, who grew up in Oswego, wanted people back home to see it.
The reason why I am sending you this photo (I apologize if this is very unusual or informal, I have never done this before…) … is so that this unit, the men here, can be seen publicly for what they do here. …
I am not trying to prove a point or support a cause but instead, to just show the public, civilians, …what their soldiers do.
McCann, 23, is not an official army photographer. He is a gunner with Bravo Battery 2nd Battalion 8th Field Artillery, 1st Division 25th Stryker Brigade Combat Team. He enlisted in 2007 after graduating from Oswego High School, started taking photos during his first deployment to Iraq in 2008-09, and continued in his second deployment, this time to Afghanistan, where he was sent in April.
He wanted his family and friends to see what it was like over there, and to have photos for his own personal records.
It is a universal impulse. “I think soldiers have always documented” their experiences, said Teri Bianchi, exhibits manager at the First Division Museum at Cantigny in Wheaton, where an exhibit of First Division soldiers’ photographs taken in Afghanistan is on display through Sept. 5.
For its summer exhibit last year, the museum held a photo contest for active duty soldiers. The troops sent pictures, most from Iraq, of everything from patrols to interactions with Iraqi citizens to shots of soldiers hanging out at the base.
“We really wanted to show the public the soldier’s perspective, so they can see … what the soldier is seeing, what the soldier thinks important,” Bianchi said.
She liked McCann’s photo.
“That’s not an easy shot,” she said. “To get that muzzle flash like that — that’s either taking a lot of shots, really good timing, or being lucky.”
“The photo is important,” said Laura Martinez, education coordinator at the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago. “But more important is the fact that the sergeant wanted to take it and wanted to share it.”
“He’s proud of his team, he wants people to know what a good job they’re doing, and he’s trying to reach out to civilians here and say, ‘Look what my guys are doing, they’re doing a good job, don’t forget about us.'”
In a subsequent email from Afghanistan, McCann said that on the night this picture was taken his unit was assigned to fire at a target he is permitted to describe only as “suspected enemy movements.”
I had been eagerly waiting to take a photo of the section (a small element consisting of 9 soldiers, an artillery term for “squad”) firing the howitzer since I came to Afghanistan in April. When I went out to the gunline, I grabbed all of my gear and along with the tripod and camera…(Nikon D90) and hoped I could capture a good photograph of the M777 firing. It’s
hard to catch a picture of the blast from the M777 Howitzer as it’s fired. It’s just a split second to catch.
When he saw he had caught the moment of firing, he excitedly shared it. He gave it to the soldiers in the picture, some of whom posted it on Facebook, and sent it home to his father.
“I was amazed,” said Timothy McCann, presiding judge of Kendall County Circuit Court. “I did not realize he was taking photos over there. And I thought that was very cool. He was very proud of his men.”
He found the image remarkable. “That split second where you actually see the flame from the weapon … how he timed it is incredible,” he said.
But he also found it sobering. “This isn’t the Fourth of July fireworks,” he said. “These are live rounds of ammunition being sent at something or somebody.”
Each man in the photo has a specific role, Christopher McCann wrote in an email. From left to right:
SPC Forbes, Michael. He is the Ammunition Team Chief and Radio Telephone Operator. He is sitting down on the very left of the photo (You can see his headlamp shining on the wooden desk). His responsibility is to keep track of the ammunition, fire missions, and radio communications…
PFC Uhrle, Gene. Cannoneer #2. He places the powder for the projectile (155M round) into the tube. Also closes and opens the breech to the tube.
Myself …
When a fire mission comes down I position the gun to its target. There are several precision instruments I use to do this, but basically I align the gun by traversing and elevating the tube using handwheels.
PFC Fingerson, Dakota. Cannoneer #3. He grabs the powder (explosive used to eject the projectile from the tube), and hands it to the #2 man to place inside the tube. Also from Wisconsin.
SGT Calhoun, Paul. Good friend of mine from Rockford, Illinois (although I did not know him until he arrived to my duty station in October 2009). He is the Section Chief. He oversees all actions on the gun, and is fully responsible for everything that is done in the section. He is telling Cannoneer #1 to fire the howitzer from a hand signal you see in the picture, moving his arm from his head to his side.
And McCann explained something else:
In the photo
we are all covering our ears. The percussion of the round being fired goes up to about 200 decibels. I have lost most of my hearing in the left ear from it (and… other explosions/gunfire), I now have to wear a hearing aid there.
McCann was sent back to the U.S. last week for surgery on a herniated disk that has caused nerve damage.
“Not a lot of people know exactly what we do over there,” he said by cellphone from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash. “They see a lot movies, but even the movies … don’t get the actual feeling of what goes on over there. It’s just kind of cool to see, hey, this is what actually happens. This is what soldiers every day do.”
